The Wildfire and the Ember {Part 4 of 8 Series: Eldest Daughter Turned Cycle Breaker} | Episode 30

**TRIGGER WARNING: Brief discussion of SA included in this episode.**

There is a woman who has been holding everything together for so long that she forgot she was allowed to put it down.

This episode is for her.

Ashley Crabb gets raw about the years she spent living two lives at once — performing control while quietly unraveling, choosing chaos because it was the only language she had ever been taught. This isn't a redemption arc with clean edges. It's the story of what happens before the turning point. The part nobody talks about.

What This Episode Holds

• The moment Ashley stopped pretending — not because everything collapsed, but because the weight of holding it all finally stopped being worth it
• How an act of violation in middle school became the permission slip to stop caring for herself entirely, and how she carried that silence forward for over a decade
• The way distance never actually changes anything — because we pack our shadows right alongside our suitcases
• The particular kind of numbness that looks like thriving from the outside, and how COVID stripped away the last place left to hide
• How the knowing that she was meant to be a mother arrived not as an idea but as an instinct — and what she chose to do with that ember instead of letting it ignite another fire she couldn't control
• The She-Wolf tattoo, and the woman it represents: not rage for the sake of destruction, but instinct, strength, and the decision to build

Who This Episode Is For

• The woman who has been the chaos coordinator for everyone else while quietly burning herself down
• The eldest daughter who never got held accountable because she was too busy holding everything else
• The woman who ran — to a new city, a new relationship, a new identity — and couldn't figure out why it still followed her
• The woman who chose numbness because stopping meant feeling everything she had been outrunning
• The woman who is somewhere between the wildfire and the ember, and doesn't know yet that both of those things can live in her at once

Key Quote

"I get to be a wildfire and the ember. I get to be something steady. I don't have to be something that burns everything down just to feel in control and to feel powerful. I get to be something that builds."

If this conversation landed somewhere real for you, follow or subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss what comes next. The next chapter is already in motion.

You don't have to have the plan. You just need the moment — the one where you look at yourself and decide that the life you've been living is no longer worth the cost of carrying it.

That moment is not a finish line. It's a beginning. And you belong here, in the middle of it, figuring it out. Still messy. Still becoming. Exactly where you're supposed to be.

RESOURCES + CONNECTION:

Find Ashley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsashleycrabb/ 

Download the Tell My Story Firestarter: https://ashley-crabb.mykajabi.com/opt-in 

Book a Vibe Check Call with Me: https://calendly.com/itsashleycrabb/30min 

Transcript

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This is the part of the story where I decided I was done pretending. I was done pretending I was okay. I was done pretending everything was okay. And not because everything fell apart, not because I broke, not because I hit rock bottom, but because everything I had been holding, everything I had been holding together stopped working for me, stopped serving me. And I realized I had been living for so long. Like I could outrun it all. I could outrun the chaos. I could outrun the pain. I could outrun the version of me who knew she wasn't actually living. And I got really good at it until I wasn't. Welcome to Wealth and Mothers, the show where we rewrite the rules of success for women who are building businesses, creating wealth, and raising families all at the same damn time. I'm Ashley Crab, and this isn't a show about balance, productivity, or doing more. This is a space for mothers who know they're caring more than anyone acknowledges, and who are ready to turn that into power, leadership, and wealth. Here we talk about what it actually looks like to create a movement inside the reality of motherhood. The invisible labor, the identity shifts, the ambition, the pressure, and the truth that none of it disqualifies you from wealth. It qualifies you for it. Because mothers don't need to shrink to succeed, they need to be seen. Let's get into today's episode. There is a version of me. There is a version of all of us who know exactly what we're doing. I knew exactly what I was doing. I wasn't clueless. I wasn't blind to it. I could see it. I chose to look away from it, but I could see the way I was living. I could see the decisions I was making. I could see the patterns I was repeating. And I still decided that chaos was the best of the choices I was offered. And I told myself I was fine with it, that I was thriving in it, that I was in control. But I wasn't fine with it. I wasn't in control. I was so afraid of losing control that I tried to grip onto control with everything I had. I was so numb. I was so numb in my recklessness. And I was spiraling. When I look back on it now, I made all of these decisions to stop pretending to stop living a double life when I lived out in Washington State. But that double life started so many years before Washington. Like I said last week, from the time I was 12, I started pushing back against the narrative I was given. I started sneaking out, I started lying, I started drinking. I put myself in places and rooms that I never should have been in. High school became the continual and constant split that I was experiencing at home. Good girl over here, bad girl over there. I was so great at balancing, at hustling, at being productive in holding both identities at once. I was trying to be enough and be worthy of being the girl who was desired in both of those rooms, in all of those spaces. And I was never actually grounded. I was never actually grounded at home, outside of my home, within myself. And when I look back at when I was finally able to detach, when I finally decided I no longer want to be tethered to this colorful life that I am still trying to hold on to, was when I was raped. I was raped when I was in middle school. And that event in my life allowed me to cut the cord to reality. It allowed me to disconnect. And I didn't have to do it loudly because no one was listening to me, anyways. No one saw me, anyways. So no one was going to be able to point to me and say, that is when Ashley changed. But inside of me, that shadow said, I'm going to stay here. That shadow said, I have finally gathered up all of your buddies from the last 13 years, and we're coming along for the ride, baby. I was finally able to stop caring. I stopped caring about me. I stopped caring about my body, my brain. I no longer needed anyone to protect it or keep it safe. And I sure as shit didn't have to do it anymore. Something that was supposed to feel like mine was no longer mine. And it was taken in the way that it should never have been. It allowed me to stay reckless, to stay disconnected. I didn't have to sit in what I had experienced. I just kept moving all through high school. College didn't stop it, rugby didn't stop it. Both of those things fed into my ability to continue to disappear, to keep the cycle going, to keep the patterns going, to continue to split myself. When I moved to Washington, I realized I could perform and I could perform on a stage where no one has seen me before. I went as far as I possibly could in the moment. And I thought on some level that distance would either change me or change the chapters that I was leaving behind. But it didn't change anything because I brought everything with me. I packed up everything I could into three suitcases and never looked back, but I packed all of my shadows and they packed their shit for the ride, too. The role, the eldest daughter role, the reckless martyr, the victim, the narrative that I had been living for so long and decided I was going to continue writing. That chaos no longer had to be contained in Washington. It no longer had to be contained because no one has seen me play on this stage before. I didn't have to contain the chaos. I didn't have to be the chaos coordinator. I could create the chaos. I didn't have to just live in other people's chaos anymore. I could live in my own. I was the chaos queen. The drinking, the driving, the drugs, staying out all night, lying, making the same damn decisions I saw my mom make over and over again. The same decisions that I knew were destructive. I decided to do them anyways. And one of the hardest things for me to admit is that I decided to do them anyways. I knew what I was doing and I just didn't stop. Because stopping meant I had to face and feel everything. The childhood, the silence, the split, the seed of resentment, the way that I decided to disconnect, not just from myself, but from reality, from everyone around me. Stopping meant that I had to let go of the fear. Stopping meant I had to take responsibility for myself, that I had to hold myself accountable. Because when you get to be the eldest daughter and the reckless martyr and everything in between, no one in your life, no one in my life had ever truly, truly held me accountable. And I wasn't fucking ready for that. Chaos was easier than taking radical responsibility for my decisions. And so I chose to play the fictional character who was thriving. But what was really happening was that I was destroying myself. I was destroying the mission, my design purpose for being here. And I did it until I couldn't anymore. And when it caught up to me, it wasn't loud, but it wasn't quiet. It was something totally different. It was another hit of chaos. COVID hit and I got laid off. I couldn't find a job and I lost control in a way I never, never experienced. Because no matter how chaotic things had been before, I always had some sort of movement. I always had some sort of monetary support. I always had something to do with my hands and my brain somewhere to go. A way to stay out of my head and ahead of myself. But when I got laid off, when the world shut down, when everything changed, when chaos hit, I couldn't run anymore. I literally couldn't run anymore. There was nowhere to go. There was no distraction, no performance, no version of me that I could hide inside anymore. It was me and my husband stuck in that damn house. And oh, did I try to keep avoiding it? I tried to keep drinking and drugging and numbing the pain away and into clarity, but it wasn't clarity. I was so tired, I was so exhausted. I finally felt like the cycle was empty. It was meaningless. I was living a meaningless life. And underneath all of that, that fear was raging, real fear, that if I didn't stop now, I was going to destroy me. And how fucking dare I? How dare I put out my own flame? How dare I not see the magic inside of me? I could no longer just pretend to be having fun and figure it out. I could see where that would lead. And I refuse to let that be my life. And did I really have a plan? No, I had a moment. I didn't have a plan. I had a moment in time where choices were presented to me again and I had to make a decision. I had to look myself in the face and tell my truth, claim my truth, own the truth of what I wanted out of this life. I don't want this ugly, heavy, noisy, staticky version to be my life. I want to live in full color. I want to love again. I want to be grounded. I want to be rooted. And that is when I knew that I was made to be a mom. It wasn't an idea. It was something that overcame me. It was a knowing that I, for so long, had told myself the lie that I didn't want to be a mom, that I wasn't worthy or enough, that I would destroy it. So I avoided the feeling of what motherhood would be like. I avoided the feeling of what it would be like to love again so fully and so freely, to be able to provide another human being the ability to live out their mission. Like I realized how much I was meant for that. No longer could I run. I had to stop the noise. I had to be willing to listen. And when I said something to my husband, and he said, No, that wildfire could have erupted. It could have forced everything. It could have burned it all down and tried to control what the future was meant to be. But I didn't allow it to. Start without your master plan. Start without knowing exactly what you're building. Your energy is not self-destruction. You need to build, you need to create. Chaos is no longer yours to hold. That is one of the best ways I can share that story of my life. The wildfire, the spark inside me was there. I still had anger. I still have it. I still have anger and recklessness, intensity. It's all still there. But something new is there. And it's the knowledge that I get to be a wildfire and the ember. I get to be something steady. I don't have to be something that burns everything down just to feel in control and to feel powerful. I get to be something that builds. Even if I couldn't understand it yet, even if I'm still working out right now what it is that I meant to build. In that moment, I got a She-Wolf tattoo. And when I am thinking about the She-Wolf tattoo right now, I know who she is. She's no longer a woman who is here for rage for the sake of destroying. She is instinct. She is strength. She is the part of me, the beast that woke up and said, You no longer will live like this. She's the part of me that said, You are a leader. You are a mother. You are filled with wealth. The wildfire, the ember, the truth underneath all of it is that your story isn't finished. This isn't where your story ends. It gets to be something different. It doesn't have to be overnight. But it starts now. The next chapter starts now. Still messy, still figuring it out, still carrying the knowledge that you are learning how to drop what you've been carrying your whole life. I could feel it then. I could feel that the life I was living was meant to be so much more. And I was no longer willing to bury it. That was the moment that I realized that I was leaving everything I had known. I was leaving all of the shit that I had packed. That was the start of realizing that I don't go back. I don't get to go back. I don't want to go back. I decide that I will no longer numb, ignore, or just know. I am going to start acting. I am going to continue on living the life I am meant for, no matter how hard the old life tries to drag me back. That was the moment I knew everything had to change, even if I didn't have all the words yet. And this part of my story matters because it's not clean. It was not a clean amputation. Deciding that I would no longer live that life, be that character, be that woman, that the woman I have always meant to be has just been waiting for me to let her out. That part of the story isn't quite finished. I didn't become someone different overnight. I didn't become that feral little girl again overnight, every day. I am still fighting to be her and not fighting in a way to destroy, fighting in a way because I know that the only truth now is that everything I build is not from chaos. It is from a rooted foundation. But it can still be messy, it can still be figuring it out. But I no longer have to carry everything I've been carrying. And as I learn how to put down 33 years of believing I had to carry everything that wasn't mine, I can now understand that taking responsibility, taking accountability for a life that doesn't fit anymore. And the decisions I made to stay there means that I have the decisions to leave. Just like I ran, I get to leave the shadows behind. I get to say, you don't come with me anymore. Once I knew that I could leave the chaos behind. I knew that there would be moments and situations and limiting beliefs that would try to drag me back. They would try to tell me that numbing it is easier, that ignoring it is easier. But you know, I know that it's not. And I know that I want to continue to make this change. So when I finally decided to listen to myself, to trust myself again, to love myself again first. And I was able to start creating space to hear the message that was being sent to me, the message that I was supposed to channel, the mission that I was supposed to be on, in the moment when I recognized that motherhood was meant for me. I knew even though I didn't fully know yet, I knew even though I didn't know the exact plan yet, that the mission was in motion. And that everything that had come before this, the narrative, the cost, the decisions I made, were all part of the plan, of the point of my narrative to get to where I am today. And I am so excited to continue to share this journey, all of these next chapters with you. If this episode resonated with you, share it with another mother who is on a mission, who is building something real. This is how we change the conversation by making sure women like us are seen, heard, and paid. And if you're ready to step into your next level of visibility, leadership, and wealth, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss what's coming next. You can also connect with me on Instagram, TikTok, my newsletter, where I share daily thoughts and conversations around motherhood, identity, and wealth. I'll leave you with this. You are not behind, you are not too much, and you do not need to choose between your family and your success. You are the woman who gets to have it both. I'll see you in the next episode.